"High High High" on Betty Buckley.

Ms. B's response.

So... last night, Andy Einhorn (my first ever collaborator on "London Still" The Concert, not to mention the rising star personal MD of Audra MacDonald, and of Cinderella on Broadway) and I had a SLUMBER PARTY of sorts. 

We met at the stage door post-show, bought some snacks and head up town and got REAL about life, love, the great Betty Buckley, Patriotism, and musical theatre, all very LATE into the night. 

Love Betty Buckley on Twitter and buy the 1776 Original Cast Recording.

It is never too late to stay up too late...

A Trip to the Theatre [a memoir]

We had decided to see a touring production of Tartuffe in Ann Arbor a few days after Thanksgiving.

I’d seen him at the intermission lurking in the corners of the auditorium, but didn’t approach because he’d been so integral the High School Theatre Department malarkey which still, despite all that had transpired, felt so raw and recent.

John Breen was wildly talented, popular and charismatic (certain to become a professional actor in the future), but he was also withdrawn and brooding and (what I felt was) dismissive of my underclassmen status. Not to mention, he was a classmate of A, S and K (and A’s boyfriend for a period of time), and all of this, I suppose, made him an adversary-by-association in High School terms. I dunno. I just tried to stay out of everyone's way.

But in hindsight, I realize he was most likely shy.

After the show I approached from across the theatre. (In case you were wondering, the journey through the cushioned folding chairs is also known as The High Road…) The trip was arduous.

    “Hi John,” I said, nodding awkwardly.
    “Oh, hey Alex” he replied with his signature nonchalance.

I tried not to wince at the jarring use of 'Alex,' (deeply, deeply not my name) and distract myself by observing that he was also finding our prior connection confusing—do I or do I not like her? Am I under the same obligations in college as I was in High School? Ah! This mind-of-my-own is killing me.

    “What are you doing here?”
    “I just saw the show.”
    “Right…” he looked about him and thought, “...but you don’t go to school here do you?”
    “No.”
    “Right. But you’re a Freshman right now, right?”
    “...Sure.”

I suppose it was technically true, and even if it wasn’t, it was the easiest response.

    “So are you home early for Thanksgiving or something?”

This was by far and away, the most concern John Breen had ever shown me, and that concern, far more than the probing nature of the questions themselves, was starting to feel a little uneasy.

    “Um—” I hesitated, “well, not exactly.”
    “Oh.” It started to dawn on John Breen that something was fishy, “God Alex, I’m sorry” he immediately retreated, “I didn’t mean to pr—”
    “—My Dad died.”

There was a horrible pause.
John Breen stared at me.

    “Pardon?”
    “A few weeks ago. He’s dead. He died.” I was repeating it because John wasn’t moving. I was beginning to become concerned for his life.

*

The Playing Frisbee with the Popular Kids story goes like this:

[AL— a Freshman in a large, typical, public American High School holding her own because of her ability to excel in the performing arts but a Freshman and young woman nonetheless. It is the spring of 1998 in a typical Midwestern “Wonder Years-y” suburb. The phone rings. AL answers it.]

Freshman Al: Hello, Silber residence.
Popular Senior: [awkwardly] Hey Al, this is Popular Senior calling.
Freshman Al: Oh. Um, hi Popular Senior [WTF?!], what’s going… on?
Popular Senior: Well…
Popular Junior: [calling from the background] Ask him! He said! He said to call! He said he’d play!
Popular Senior: Eh, sorry that was *Popular Junior Guy.*
Freshman Al: I see.
Popular Senior: Well, we were calling because we were just hanging in the park and wondered if...
[AL thinks momentarily “Ohmigod the popular guys want to hang with me…”]
…If your Dad wanted to play Frisbee with us?

[…Pause]

Popular Junior: [yelling from the background] Is he gonna come?!
Freshman Al: Let me… um… get him… one second…
Popular Senior: Well, we’re actually… like down the street can we just come over?
Freshman Al: Eh, sure. I’ll get my Dad.

[Hangs up. Calls upstairs]

DAD!

Dad: Yeah?
Al: The Popular Boys wanted to know if you want to… play FRISBEE with them…? [disbelief] Did you say you’d hang out with them?
Dad: …well… um, yeah. [AL displays further disbelief] Can I go? I promise not to say anything embarrassing. I’ll be really cool I promise!
Al: DAD! THEY ARE THE SUPER MOST POPULAR BOYS! THIS IS So…. RIDICULOUS!!
Dad: But Al I really want to play Frisbee! Pleeeease?
Al: Oh God FINE.

[Doorbell rings. AL answers door…]

Al: Hey.
Popular Boys: Hey.
[Pause]
…Um, is your Dad home…?
Al: [life-over] Yeah.
Popular Boys: …Cool…
Al: …okay…I’ll go get him…

[AL turns around and sees her Dad right beside the door looking really, really cute and anxious to go and play with the boys. Like a kid.]

Al: Oh go ahead Dad heavens sake!
Dad: Thanks Al! See ya!
Popular Boys: Later Al.

…[AL alone, “My Dad is more popular in high school than I am…Awesome” on her face.]



That was pretty typical.
A group of über-cool teenagers thinking my Dad was the absolute best. Of course the über cool teenagers could get in line, because everyone thought Mike Silber was the absolute best.


*


Back in the auditorium, John Breen was still before me, completely still.

    “Oh my God Alex, I am…” he looked at the floor, his hands in fists within his winter coat pockets, “I am really so, so sorry to hear that.”
    “It’s okay...” I replied without thinking.

I wanted it to be okay. For him. Despite the fact that we had never really been friends, that he had never really given me the time of day aside from the lines we exchanged on stage, and despite the fact that he had never exactly stood up for me. Despite it all I wanted him to come out of this conversation unscathed, for I could actually hear his heart crumbling from an arm’s length away.

     “I mean, of course it is not okay,” I reconsidered, “but… well, anyway thank you.” I could feel the acid in my throat.
    “I uh…” he hesitated, “I really liked your Dad...” John said, eyes still locked on the bizarrely bright carpet on the floor of the theatre, “… a lot...” said John Breen of the popular Frisbee boys.

Whoever would have thought he would be so devastated to hear that Mike Silber was no more?

    “Take care, John.”

And I left him there; alone and aching in the emptying theatre.

Zhivago

I've just spent a wonderful week work-shopping a Lucy Simon masterpiece: Dr. Zhivago The Musical.

It was a magnificent week 'Love-Triangle-ng' with great pals Tam Mutu and Sierra Boggess (my “Shar-Bear” and I have never worked together before— just shared that epic dressing room in Master Class. It was magic. We called it "Sophie and Sharon Go To Russia, Sing a Power Ballad and Share a Husband"...)

Suffice it to say: Tonya, Yuri and Lara sang their faces off...

But there was no joy comparable to exploring one of my favorite (exquisitely touching) characters in literature: Yuri Zhivago's childhood best friend and wife, Tonya. (Я тебя люблю, Tonya!) Boris Pasternak wrote a masterpiece (I have waxed lyrical about his virtues and influence before), what an honor to bring it to musical life, however fleetingly. 

"You in others - this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life - your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you - the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it." - Boris Pasternak 

The Return of Sophie and Sharon!

Tonya, Yuri and Lara (with Tam Mutu and Sierra Boggess)

It's better on the other side of fear.

No but really. You should.

a Family 4th

Nothing like force-feeding your nieces some good, hearty, patriotic musical theatre on the 4th of July... Someone oughtta open up a window...
A Musical 4th from Alexandra Silber on Vimeo.

30

Here it is.
The big Three-O.
Dirty 30.
The milestone of crazy women everywhere.
Let's review.

Thirty is:

- The sum of the first four squares, which makes it a square pyramidal number.
- The code for international direct dial phone calls to Greece
- The total number of major and minor keys in Western tonal music, including enharmonic equivalents!
- A semiperfect number (adding up some subsets of its divisors --e.g., 5, 10 and 15-- gives 30)
- The atomic number of zinc. 
- –30– is used to indicate the end of a newspaper (or broadcast) story, a copy editor's typographical notation.
- The number of days in the months April, June, September and November (and in very strange and unusual circumstances February—see February 30)
- The number of cars in the F-Zero franchise.
- The minimum age for United States senators
- The pearl wedding anniversary!
- The number of tracks on The Beatles' eponymous album, usually known as The White Album

But I think one thing is certain. When I look back, I will always know that I spent my 20s "figuring it out"-- and hadn't truly figured anything out, until now.
Not really.
... aaaaaand I am also pretty certain I will be saying THAT sentence again... many times over. For the rest of my life.

29 was a year of great overturn-- over the last year I have made some new resolutions, taken a conscious new course of action in my life, my career and my relationships...

Crucially this: this may come a surprise to those of you who know me as a "person who sings," but for whatever reason, singing has been a source of extraordinary emotional potency for me, and not always in a positive way.


I am going to let you in on a very personal experience, and I think you shall relate on some level. 

There is hardly a time I can remember when did not sing, with purity, and coming from a place of utter spiritual exuberance. I would sing around the house, in the shower and in the car almost unconsciously, I poured and poured over role models, I Singing was, in truth, my primary source of joy.

When my father died in 2001, my mother made an observation: I had stopped singing entirely.
No more did I sing blithely about the house.
No more recordings.
No more music, it would seem, at all.
For you see, there was nothing to be joyful about. 

It was entirely subconscious, but as I look back and unfold the deep layers of so complicated a time, I recognize that I stored the enormity of those feelings--all my confusion and anger and sorrow and grief-- in my voice. It was lodged there, a ball of delicate string growing more tangled and entrenched in itself every day... and I didn't even know. 

So what did I do?
I denied I was a singer.
I denied more lessons, any formal higher training.
I sewed up my throat and (with no regret whatsoever) got my degree in classical acting (and even subconsciously suggested I choreograph the Christmas pantomime so I could avoid singing one of the leads!)
My true nature caught up with me when Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White would not allow me to hide anymore... and I suppose the rest is sort of history. Whoever would have thought? Not me.

But here is the crucial revelation:

If I continued to say "I am not a singer" over and over again, that statement accomplished a few things:

1. It sent that exact message to The Universe, (and The Universe raged against my mind, and responded with a palpable vengeance...putting me into more and more confrontational situations with this GIANT LIE!)
2. It declared that everything I DID achieve as a singer was a "miracle" and...
3. ...everything I did NOT achieve was "not my fault" because I was "not a singer..."

But basically: it was not mature. 
It was a shallow attempt to "get off the hook" to absolve me of any form of personal responsibility. 
It was not the behavior of a woman.
It was not in line with my true nature, my deepest desires, or the essence of my morals.
It was the behavior of a scared little girl.

So, with the help of a few dedicated (and very compassionate) people, I decided, quite consciously (and with gut-wrenching, sometimes literally paralyzing terror), to become the singer I knew I was.
To throw myself in head first, and know that if I truly failed, at least I would always know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I failed honestly.

To accept responsibility.
To accept myself.
...isn't that what this whole business of life is all about?

We all do this-- with our careers, our relationships, our everyday interactions with our inner-consciousness. There's a wonderful quote from Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan's character Kathleen says

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave..."

After a few months of soul-crushing work:
Carnegie Hall called...
Then Caramoor Music Festival...
...and then what for me was the job of a lifetime singing Maria in West Side Story with the San Francisco Symphony on the history making, first-ever symphonic recording of the iconic piece.

I dunno.
Somehow?
Somehow I think The Universe might have been saying

"...Well...? FINALLY..."

...Not that anyone probably believed my bulls*** in the first place...

And so, I, like so many before me, have spent my 20s truly becoming myself.
I stand before you today truly owning it all.
Owning my strengths.
My power.
My Achilles-heels.
My insecurites.
My needs.
My deepest and more profoundly wished-for hopes and dreams.

As I spent the very last day of my 20s singing "Tonight" and "One Hand, One Heart" and "I Feel Pretty" out across the San Francisco Symphony, I felt my cells actually turn over. At the stroke of midnight, when some of the greatest musicians in the world sang "Happy Birthday" I felt it: life would not, could not, ever be the same. For when you not only take responsibility for you life, but for who you truly are, the world unfolds itself before you like a flower.

It is my belief that it is our primary objective, our most crucial human vocation, to continue this process throughout the course of our lives.
I vow to do so.

That is what a true birth-day, is all about.

"San Francisco Symphony's Tony & Maria..."

Opening tonight at San Francisco Symphony's Davies Hall, until July 2.  

From the Huffington Post:

"Say it loud, say it soft -- West Side Story. And there's music playing. It's just there, deep in the heart, engraved in the culture and playing somewhere right this moment. San Francisco Symphony is presenting five performances of West Side Story, June 27-30 / July 2, and like you've never seen or heard before. They are the first to present the complete 1957 musical on a concert stage. And hold on, the production is being recorded. It may prove to be the most significant recording of the show since the Original Broadway cast. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas worked with Leonard Bernstein and is internationally renowned for being the composer's champion interpreter. In the roles of the star-crossed lovers, popular Broadway and TV personality Cheyenne Jackson as "Tony" and the fastest-rising soprano in musical theatre, Alexandra Silber as "Maria." It's the stuff that dreams are made of."

Read the full article HERE.

An Open Letter to Rebecca Luker

Dear Rebecca,

So, Hi.
This is weird.
I think I know that.
I mean, we're sort of 'colleagues' now, though we haven't worked together (yet!), and we know each others' names and have come to each others' shows, but here is the thing:

I feel like I have to tell you something. Truth is, when I dig deep down and reeeally give it a good think, there really is no other single person who has influenced my artistic life as profoundly as you.

[*takes a deep breath... exhales...*]

I know.
I know that is an intense thing to say.
It is a "fan girl" thing to say and I am not, nor have I ever actually been a fan girl.
Not in real life.
Only about Angela Lansbury really (but I admit that falls under the category of "Crazy Love" and doesn't count... at least I hope not...)
Because first of all I'm of the pre-Tumblr generation, and on top of that I'm actually quite shy (I couldn't even come to meet you at stage door when I came to The Sound of Music in '98) plus, I dunno, I was born in LA, something about seeing celebrities at the bank and grocery store and all that...

But, listen, this is the crucial part:

you taught me how to sing. 

You didn't know that you were doing it, but you did.

I would listen to recordings of you and pour over them with a fine tooth comb, ear pressed close to the speaker, completely in astonishment of how you don't really seem to have a break, how your vibrato is so even and natural and "spinny" and how your tone is like velvet, and in attempting to emulate it, I learned how to sing. In addition, your depth of feeling oozes through your voice in a way that says you trust not only your own depth of spirit, but the depth of those that hear you--it is the ultimate in creative dignity. You make old songs sound fresh and vibrant as if they were written yesterday. You make new material soar. You showed me how a soprano could be a leader in the modern era and, I am unutterably grateful for everything you inadvertently gave me.

But I am even more grateful that you are the loveliest, most gracious person in real life, who clearly loves her husband and family, who allows people to share their toothpaste (and forgives them for being super weird about it weeks later), who comes to shows Downtown, who then waits around to be generous with praise for those that are coming along behind her legacy. I am grateful for your humility, genuine, charming self-effacing sense of humor, and for your deep well of inner beauty, as much as for your talent.

When I was growing up, the classics of Broadway were the stories that shaped me; Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Jerome Kern, Bernstein, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, and those that picked up their batons. And interestingly, when I began my career in England (where I never dreamed wind would blow me) I never really came across the people that I spent so much time listening to in my bedroom, in the car, mimicking in the shower, or on a bunk bed at summer camp. I suppose, when I returned over three years ago now, I couldn't stop reeling from how commonplace it seemed to "run into" these iconic people, to share stages and Greenrooms with them-- it felt like a veritable "Whose Who" of teenage theatrical appreciation.

     "Oh hey, Brian Stokes Mitchell, thanks for clasping my hands so sincerely, welcoming me to Broadway and then telling me casually as we exchange Voice Over stories that you were ONE OF THE VOICES OF THE CALIFORNIA RAISINS. Because the world just got THAT much better."

     "Heeeeey Marin Mazzie, allow me to sing at Carnegie Hall opposite your husband and you can just sit next to my Mom in that box up there and you and Peter Freidman--stars of the first Broadway show I ever saw--can just, you know: come backstage afterward and we can all just pal about like this happens ALL THE TIME." 

     "'Sup, Sheldon Harnick? Thank you for being my real life 'Dear Friend.'"

     "And hey there, John Cullum, allow me to just call you at home on the 5th of July after weeping over 1776 which was on cable last night, and we can have a real heart-to-heart about your legacy and how much it and the theatre means to both of us..."

WHATEVER. NO BIGGIE.
JUST SOME MAJOR LEADERS THERE.
I AM TOTALLY KEEPING IT TOGETHER.
And I mean, I am. I basically know how to keep my cool. At a certain point all these people become people because they are, and you grow up (and to) realize that we all have similar processes, and the show must go on and everyone has bad vocal days and dry spells and relationship problems and coffee addictions and cellulite and its actually really marvelous. I just hope that my inner child never stops finding joy in encountering these people--never stops marveling at how I got to be so fortunate. And if I am ever so lucky to be one of those people for the generations to follow, may I be as down-to-earth-elegant as you about it.


And this is where I suppose I open this letter up to everyone-- we all have these people. Not "idols," though I am certain we have those too, but I am speaking of the real, true Role Models present in our lives in the purest sense of the word. Those individuals who form and shape the people we become by their example by simply being themselves and allowing the world to observe and edify their own paths from their precedent.

May we all revere such people, and, no matter what we do, how public or private, may we all endeavor to become role models ourselves for those we may never even know to be watching us...


So Rebecca, it occurred to me the other night at 54 Below when I came to see your glorious cabaret of Jerome Kern tunes, how much I wanted to be there. How much I wanted to hear you sing with a capital 'S.' But what really grabbed me by the collar was in fact after the show, when I came up to you and you said, sweetly as ever,
     "Alexandra, hello! Thank you for coming!"
... and we had a really nice, lovely, cordial exchange because... I don't know, I guess we're in this together now. When did that actually happen?
And I felt it--right there in the bar.
I felt that moment more than ever that I had somehow Arrived. 
How glorious. 
How commonplace.
How simple a little 'hello--'
--a greeting that could never, ever fully articulate my appreciation for all of the above.
And how perfect that that precise moment of clarity, should come from you.

So (not at all creepily, but in an utterly normal manner), I thank you.
For all of it.

Sincerely,

Al

x

Caramoor Opening Weekend [à la mode...]

Opening weekend at Caramoor!

Plus, a grand little sneak peek at "Vanilla Ice Cream..."

Enjoy!

She Loves Me at Caramoor

Dear Friend,

Please join us in the beautiful woods of Katonah New York with an INCREDIBLE Broadway cast in what has fast become a full-fledged production directed and conducted by Ted Sperling with the stunning Orchestra of St. Lukes-- hear the original orchestrations in the FULL glory. "Dear Friends" Sheldon and Margie Harnick will be there, so should you. 

The Vanilla Ice Cream is on me. 

 Sincerely Yours, 

Dear Friend.
xo

"It All Turns on Affection"

I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

-Wendell Berry from “It All Turns on Affection”, 2012 Jefferson Lecture

A Father's Day Email

The Miracle Worker

Three years ago, I received an email from one of my oldest, dearest friends, David Fetzer. It moved me so much, it inspired a spout of memories that I wrote about here.

This is what it said:

"Three things I miss about your Papa:

1. Hearing him shout "Fetzer!" either from across a room, or hallway, or on the other end of the phone, in the background.

2. His talent for singing ever-so-subtly off-key.

3. His crazy infectious perma-smile, especially in the context of watching his daughter when she performed on stage. Which I did get to witness.

Thinking of you both today.  =) "

Emails like this always arrive out of the blue from Fetzer-- just one of those guys. He'd show up magically in your inbox, and every so often on your doorstep in Detroit, Glasgow, London, or at the stage door in Los Angeles, beaming with pride.

I've written about Fetzer a few times on this blog-- remember the adorable Salt Laker who sat next to me in Junior year directing class at Interlochen? The curly-haired one with open, knowing eyes, jaunty hats, and hands that fit so perfectly in my own, when we held them they made a suction noise? I gave him a mold of my hand when we parted ways at the end of school, and after reading the post linked above he sent me this photograph to show that the hand still sat upon his desk.

He gave some rousing performances at Interlochen-- some were in scene-work the world never got to see (a stunning Prince Hal soliloquy, and Oswald in Ghosts come to mind). Then there was the time he staged a particularly naughty experiment with his Senior Directed One-Act of Lord Byron's Love Letter, in which he rehearsed his actors in a fully staged version of the show for his professor, only to wheel out a movie projector and play a silent FILM version of the play that his cast narrated out loud below the screen, to everyone's complete astonishment (and, to the professor, complete horror).

Then of course, some of his brilliance was worked in the main-stage shows-- a tortured and annihilating James Keller in The Miracle Worker, where, in one performance when everything at the end of Act 1 went terribly wrong when the door Annie Sullivan was supposed to be locked in "miraculously" opened, he saved the day with his signature wit asking,
     "What'd she do--JUMP?"
to rapturous applause.
Not to mention the silent Waiter in She Loves Me--(in fact, I'm having a lot of fond memories of both my Dad and Fetzer this week as I rehearse for She Loves Me at Caramoor.)

He played guitar left handed.
He drew beautiful cartoons.
He smiled with a sweet little smirk.
He wrote gorgeous, hand-written letters and sent them in the actual mail.
He had a wonderful band with his best friend (called Mushman).
He created a theatre company in Salt Lake City to provide culture to the town that was his home.
He believed in, and supported his friends.

He also gave me one of the very best Father's Day memories in recent history.
I am grateful to him.
I have thought of him every year on the occasion since he sent that message. 

Isn't life marvelous like that?  How a day that once provided joy, in the absence of a father presents so much heartache, but now, I think less of the heartache-- I think of Fetzer's Father's Day Email. 

And I think, as the above memory insinuates, that David Fetzer was always sort of Dad's favorite. They shared a sort of quiet innocent, "watching" quality--both very young souls I think. Despite all their intellect and wisdom, they shared a sense of wonder about being here; Alive and in The World, that is. They went for walks and didn't do a lot of talking. They "got" each other. And I recall how Fetzer dropped absolutely everything to make his way to Detroit for Dad's funeral. Something about his presence there was the tipping point of difference for a lot of us.


David turned 30 on December 17th last year...
     a few days later, he was gone.
Too soon.
Far too soon for anyone, but beyond comprehension for a star so bright.
I am fortunate to have know him and called him a friend.
Anyone that knew him I am certain feels the same. 

I hope that in whatever lies beyond, he could hear Dad shout "Fetzer!"from 'across a room, or hallway' as he entered, and I like to think of them taking nice walks out there, without saying a lot, just as they always did.

See you in the stars, David. 

And thank you.